“Please don’t list a litany of things that you didn’t like about their pricing, marketing, distribution method as why it is ok to steal music (…) This essay is one big justification of file sharing”

I need you to acknowledge that I *never* said it was okay to steal anything or to infringe on copyright. There are laws making those activities illegal, and I fully respect that. By assuming otherwise, you are repeatedly calling me a thief, or at least an instigator of crime. My article is not justifying anything, and you have some nerve to say that it does. It has to do with the *causes* of the recent decline in music revenues, since there are a lot of misconceptions that need clearing up. Including more than a few in your comment:

As to the major labels allowing streaming sources due to pressure? That’s completely false. The labels have NEVER changed their practices until the business model could be PROVEN to make them more money. The tried vehemently to kill the LP, music on radio, the CD burner, the Rio, the cassette tape, and they *actually* killed the minidisc. *Any* new media format or initiative that might reduce revenues is met with litigation and cries of not “uncle”, but “wolf”. And *never* with acceptance due to ‘pressure’.

I also never disputed corporations’ right to control their own business models, since they DO own the product and can do with it as they please. All I am saying is when the business model that ensured their high revenues withers, to keep their expectations realistic and not fool themselves about the reasons. And if they believe file sharing is “fully to blame”, they are plainly wrong.

“If you have actual data on decreased music consumed, I really would like to see it.”

You know as well as I do that such numbers are extremely difficult to come by. Not even the music industry has objective numbers on music consumption. But would you accept a documented decline in music sales? ;-)

“kids today DO NOT, DO NOT pay for music”

Any data on that? At all? Or is it just another assumption based on your mental model of the world?

“(’85-’89) I bought lots and lots of CD (…) Would I do this today? Of course not”

So because you are the type of person who would have downloaded music illegally (that you’d have bought otherwise), then by extension everyone else does the same? If that is your logic, then I see the problem. Personally, I don’t believe ‘kids’ who download 1.000 illegal music tracks are all kids who would have bought 1.000 tracks if the internet hadn’t existed – not even close. This is easily proven by the industry’s own numbers. The FACT is, the ‘kids’ who download what they can’t afford are the same ‘kids’ who used to record what they couldn’t afford on cassette tapes, and the ‘kids’ before them who used to listen on the radio to the records they couldn’t afford. I am actually trying to compile the blank cassette tape sales numbers right now, since I am suspecting that they will show that the high ratios of illegal downloads to legal purchases reported today will actually match the ratio of blank cassette copies to original albums back in the day. Disprove that, and you have a case.

In conclusion, I think you should re-read my article, this time without assuming I am trying to endorse or justify illegal activities (how the hell you got that from my article is simply beyond me). I am trying to point out a major flaw in the scapegoating logic that is all too prevalent in the music industry. And you are guilty of the same jumping-to-easy-answers, when you say “piracy and file sharing was, by far, the single biggest factor in the decline (…) This is really pretty simple”. It is *not* that simple, and that is the point of my article. You cling to this assumption because it is simple and fits into your world view, but you offer no evidence to support your claim, and that is why my article was sorely needed.

What the industry never likes to mention is that if you took the estimate downloads of music and replace each one of them with actual album and single purchases to get the same material across, you’d see probably the biggest boom in the record industry ever. Even with all those other factors for it’s decline. That makes no sense, because those downloads would not have equated to actual sales.

So what does that mean? That the illegal download means more people are hearing music then would have been had they been forced to buy.

How can that be a bad thing for the future of music?

Its STEALING!
Thats half the reason they do it!

How else to explain that no one cares about QUALITY- otherwise MP3s wouldnt exist- only quantity-

WHY the endless diatribes about how ‘It really NOT theft! No! See, because…etc.”

You kill off the record co.s, fine. No there is no one to find, nurture, and promote bands -properly-

the proof:

Todays music!

Hola comrades. I read quite an interesting blog post recently by Jens Roland called How to Kill the Music Industry. It describes the compounding reasons why a paradigm shift has occurred in the acquisition of music since (approx) 2000, relating specifi…